Hello.  My name is John, and I am a compulsive overeater and your step leader for this month.  I am also WTS Coordinator.  My address is jomarst1@aol.com.

I became abstinent on April 9, 1993.  I am a sponsor.

I firmly believe that anyone who has seriously worked the Steps to this point will have some workable concept of a Higher Power.  There will be a realization that the spiritual is an essential part of our recovery, and that we have no choice but to deal with the fact that Someone/Something besides ourselves resides at the center of the universe, and that this Higher Power has some kind of energy that can give us the will and the power to recover, which is not of our own making.

If, indeed, we have not come to this point, I think we will have rejected the message of hope in the Steps.  Assuming therefore that we have accepted the realities of the spirit, let us see what we can do to remain in that most sacred space, and learn both to know and to do the things we must do to continue in recovery.

Ideas for journaling for the first week:

What does prayer mean to me as used in this step?

For me, prayer and meditation were meaningless activities in the days prior to recovery.  I had become cynical, did not believe that there was anything spiritual to be reckoned with.  Prayer was for weaklings who could not manage their own affairs.  Of course, I was hardly managing mine but I did not know it at the time.  The surrender of the first three steps came to me as a great relief.  But that was only the beginning of my journey home.  I had to learn to live again, and I had actually forgotten how.

The first time I turned to my Higher Power for help was only a little while into program.  I asked for help in a place of great temptation, and had the temptation removed.  Just by asking.  Had the whole world known about this, I doubt anyone would have been more surprised than me!  I'm not really sure why it occurred to me to do this.  Perhaps it was just hearing about it so much in program.

Not so long after that I had the opportunity to deal with a similar situation, and the results were the same.  By now I was becoming a believer.

To pray for the removal of the compulsive power eating had over me and to find that it was removed in that moment seemed nothing short of miraculous to me.  Yet that is precisely what the program promises.  The promises tell us that our compulsions will be removed one day at a time for the rest of our lives if we follow the program.  The Big Book actually uses the word "recovered" to describe the alcoholic who actively follows program, and lives it one day at the time.  We are promised a new freedom such as we have never known.  These things were becoming real to me.  But I had many miles to go before this crisis tool could become a tool of everyday living.

But now, I knew that this thing was powerful, and that it could work for me, and I was willing to journey further.

Prayer is the way I tell the Higher Power that I have need.  If the Higher Power is energetic, as I believe, then the energy I need that is greater than what I have within myself will become available to me.  At minimum, I would be channeling my own energies into other, saner, directions.  Now to make a habit of operating this way in all my affairs!  Practice makes perfect, my old music teacher used to say.

What is meditation?

There are two ways to meditate that I know of.  Both are important to me. One is to read inspirational literature.  For a long time, I read For Today every day.  Then after a few years I began to read other recovery related devotional literature.  There are several such books available.  And now, we have our own Recovery daily meditations that are delivered right to us in our mail boxes.  In addition, other such meditations are available.  I try to read several.

The other form of meditation is also called contemplation.  It is a time of true silence, when we can be still within as well as without, and somehow get in touch with the inner realities of the spiritual.  Such process is taught in the mystical traditions of all the religions of the world.  It is because it works!

The best analogy I can come up with for myself is that when I read or study upon the written meditations, they usually seem to set up a resonation within me, like a bell that vibrates long after it is struck.  I sit quietly with those resonances, and let them reach the innermost places of my spirit.  I do not cut them short.  They have a work to do, one which changes me within, so that I can be attuned more and more to the will of my Higher Power, and thus know what I am to do with myself and my recovery.

How do you find the interior reality of the spirit for yourself?